Posts Tagged With: Ladder

So this has not much at all to do with RVing, but everything to do with getting to where I want to be in life. After deciding that I wanted to re-seal Flash’s roof, I realized that I was scared to actually get up on it. No, I don’t have issues with heights. The fact is that she’s a 1978 model, and I have no idea what water damage could be hiding up there in the roof, which means I don’t want to risk falling through the roof and ruining it, if there is any structural damage which I can’t see from the outside. Let’s be clear about something from the get-go: I am not a small girl. I look at that lovely expanse of previously-sealed aluminum roof, and I can vividly imagine my fat ass falling right through into the kitchen sink. Yeahhhhh… Not so pretty. So I went to Lowe’s to buy a ladder. I was looking for a 7′ ladder, which would be the perfect height. 8′ was too tall to secure to the back of the RV without creating added clearance issues, and 6′ was too short. Did you know that there are no 7′ ladders to be found, like… anywhere? I ended up at Home Depot, and they had the exact same selection as Lowe’s. 6′ seemed to be the only real option, although it was a bit too short. Ladders are rated by weight. Before deciding I needed to buy a ladder, I would have never known this. My happy ass just tromps up whatever ladder is handy. I never realized I was jeopardizing my life by not looking for the weight limit. So the options laid themselves out: a green one for skinny people, a blue one for overweight people, and a red one for what I can only imagine are huge, burly dudes who do a lot of roofing. I hate the color red. I know, it doesn’t make much sense. You buy a ladder to get a job done, not to look cute. But really, I just can’t stand red, and stood in the ladder aisle of Home Depot for probably a good 20 minutes, wondering if I should buy the blue ladder (which I ALMOST qualified for) or the hideous red one (which sadly, was made just for my big ass – not just burly roofers). I threw down my gloves. Fuck that red ladder. I’ve been wanting to get back to eating right and exercising every day anyway, so now I had something to work toward: not breaking my ladder (and dying in the process). I grabbed the blue ladder and triumphantly headed to the front to buy it.

So for the past month or so, I’ve been using the blue ladder, despite the fact that the giant sticker on the side of it warns me that I could possibly die by doing so. I guess it’s a warning not just about the ladder, but about my weight in general. My current weight can and might kill me, whether or not there’s a ladder involved.

So not only do I need to lose weight just so I can actually enjoy more activities, but ever since I gained all this weight in the first place, my knees have been rebeling. I feel lethargic and depressed. And this isn’t to say that I went from thin to fat all at once. I’ve been a big girl most of my life. But after college, when I moved back home, I put on a whopping 72 lbs. Holy. Shit. The day I got on the scale to see just how much I weighed after my knees started giving me shit, I just couldn’t believe how fat I’d become. I mean, knowing you’re fat and seeing the numbers are two different things.

I’ve done the yo-yo routine for a long time, and I’m done with it. I want to get to a healthier weight so I can do more without feeling like someone just kicked my ass… Not just more physical activities, but things like being able to stand on my RV roof without worrying that I’m going to cave it in. I really want to have a healthier lifestyle firmly in place by the time I move full-time into the RV. In a not-so-related note, I’ve been using up all of the chemicals in my house, and replacing them with natural products. Everything from shampoo to toilet bowl cleaner has been getting switched out. I used to work for an herbal processing company, and I could get all my organic body care stuff for super dirt cheap, but since I stopped working there, and it was easier to just buy stuff at any old store, I’ve gotten lazy about buying things that are better for myself and the environment. So I’ve stopped that too. The only cleaning products I’ve bought for inside the RV are natural ones. I obviously can’t find a tree-huggin’, hippie-ass roof seal or seam caulk… But everything that there is a healthier, better option for, I’m going the healthy way. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

So, speaking of pounds… (I do so babble sometimes…)

Last Monday, I weighed myself. I was down 10.4 lbs from my max, which is to say that I weighed in at 261.6 lbs. *cringe* For those of you bad at math, my max weight was 272 lbs. My BMI was 42.2. In non-tech speak: 42.2 is morbidly obese. That means that I am 100+ lbs over my ideal body weight. ONE HUNDRED PLUS POUNDS! I cannot overstate the horror of this fact. What the hell?

Anyway, I plan to leave that number in the past and never approach it again. I am doing a Couch-to-5K (C25K) program for running, which is a simple run/walk program that starts you out walking a lot and running a little, and every week you increase the amount you’re running, and decrease the amount you’re walking. It is set up in intervals, so you aren’t killing yourself. I’ve done the program in the past, but always end up quitting when I get to week 7 or so of the 10-week plan. Just because… ya know… laziness, depression, fill-in-the-blank… So now I’m posting about it here, so quitting would be kind of awkward, wouldn’t it? I don’t actually plan to RUN any 5K’s, mind you… I just want to get my endurance up, and the C25K plan will get me from couch potato to running 30 minutes straight without stopping in 10 weeks.

I also have dumbbells in various sizes, and am putting those to use with set exercises that I do 5x/week (the same 5 days I run on)… I also increase the reps I’m doing with those every week. And to top it off, I am walking my dog every day. He has severe hip dysplasia on his right hip joint, so I can’t do strenuous stuff with him (as much as he’d love to run all day, he pays for it later, and I hate to see him in pain). Before I got lazy the last time, we were walking 2 miles a day… So I’ve started him off at a mile a day, and every week I will up him a quarter mile, and then see where we’re at with how he feels when we reach 2 miles. If all is well there, I may just keep adding more on. He is currently on Adequan once a month, and gets a supplement of MSM/glucosamine/chondroitin every morning, along with 50mg of Rimadyl in his breakfast. He technically should be on twice as much Rimadyl per day, but I don’t want to max him out if I don’t need to, because when he gets worse, what will there be to switch him to? I’m trying to be proactive there. I plan to start him on fish oil as well, and hope that I can keep him as comfortable as possible for as long as possible on the combination (including walking, which also helps lubricate the joints).